


overdramatic and true

by liadan14



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Queer Relationship, Fluff, M/M, just these two being romantic forever, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25628440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Prompt: "So we all know Joe is the poetic romantic, but what about Nicky being insanely romantic when it’s just them? I think Joe would just. Melt. Even after a millennia."
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 16
Kudos: 541





	overdramatic and true

**Author's Note:**

> [@awickedplacethisis](https://awickedplacethisis.tumblr.com/) prompted me on tumblr.

Joe’s frying eggs at seven AM when Nicky walks into the kitchen and pauses, staring at him.

“What?” Joe asks. “Something on my face?” He’d shaved, earlier, and he’d been so tired he might have just not washed off the shaving cream.

Nicky smiles at him, crooked and lovely. “No, your eyes are just especially beautiful today.” He says it matter-of-factly, like it means nothing, like it’s obvious.

Heat prickles across the back of Joe’s neck and he fumbles the spatula, breaking a yolk.

-

Laying low in Bulgaria while the whole mess of Merrick and Booker and Copley blows over is not very interesting. Eastern Europe depresses Joe these days. He misses the Byzantine Empire. Still, the stars are so very clear, here, kilometers upon kilometers away from Varna and the gold coast, away from the tourists and the light pollution. 

“I have always loved the stars,” he tells Nicky as they lie on their backs beside each other on the roof of the safehouse, staring up.

“I know,” Nicky tells him.

“They don’t compare to your eyes, I’ll grant you,” Joe expands, feeling playful. “But you, here, beside me, and them above? It’s more than any man deserves.”

“You deserve everything I can give you and more,” Nicky responds, his gun-calloused thumb tracing the back of Joe’s hand. “Tell me the names of the stars again?”

Joe is lucky he is lying down or his knees would go weak.

-

Time goes by fast, when you have too much of it. It still feels like an eternity before they can go to Malta, just the two of them, Nile left in Andy’s capable hands (or maybe the other way around). Joe knows it’s only in his mind, but the air smells fresher than it has in months when they disembark from the ferry. The sheets of their hotel bed feel softer; the sun feels warmer. Nicky, uncut hair falling in his eyes and brushing against his collar, looks even more heart-stopping. Unable to keep his feelings to himself when they overflow like this, Joe finds himself telling Nicky all this, words spilling out his mouth into Nicky’s ear, against his shoulder, loud in the stillness of their moonlit balcony.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Nicky when the words run dry at last. “I just can’t help myself with you.”

Nicky turns to him, then, and the set of his jaw is almost harsh. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t ever apologize to me. If you never stopped speaking like that, it would be too soon. I don’t think you understand what your words mean to me, how they fill my heart.”

Joe swallows around nothing.

It’s warm in Malta, late spring, and the sunset over the unique mix of European and Arabic architecture threatens to make Joe’s heart spill over.

“Yusuf,” Nicky says softly, catching Joe’s hand in his own, pulling Joe close. “Your eyes sparkle when you tell me all about how much you love this world. Your smile, it’s – it fills me with warmth. I think I could go a hundred years without food or drink, sustained only on the way you look at me when you tell me how much you love me.”

“Nicolò,” Joe gasps, melting into him. 

The kiss, when it comes, sets his heart racing for this man all over again, as it has every day for hundreds of years and will for hundreds more.

**Author's Note:**

> [@awickedplacethisis](https://awickedplacethisis.tumblr.com/) was right. Joe would always melt. Every time. (Also like Andy could not care less if she hears them banging through the walls or whatever but this shit? This shit can fuck right off and that's why she's MORE THAN FINE with them taking their little holidays to wherever)
> 
> Title if from Taylor Swift's lover
> 
> Feel free to also prompt me for more in this fandom on [tumblr](https://bewires.tumblr.com/)


End file.
